A leg-wheel robot-based approach to the solution of flipper-track robot kinematics

This paper presents the method of solving kinematics of a flipper-track robot. A general kinematics framework based on the screw theory is introduced for the leg-wheel robots. Focusing on the contact point between a flipper and the ground surface, the flipper-track robot kinematics is presented with the equivalent hybrid leg-wheel robot kinematics. For a studied four flipper-track robot, several robot control modes and corresponding kinematics solutions are identified. The algorithm for robot posture and tracking control is presented respecting robot´s mechanical constraints. The kinematics and robot posture control were tested by simulation on a virtual robot in the MATLAB-ODE simulation environment.